Oh how weak Is mortal man! how trifling--how confined His scope of vision! Puff'd with confidence, His phrase grows big with immortality, And he, poor insect of a summer's day! Dreams of eternal honours to his name; Of endless glory and perennial bays. He idly reasons of eternity, As of the train of ages,--when, alas! Ten thousand thousand of his centuries Are, in comparison, a little point Too trivial for account.--O, it is strange, 'Tis passing strange, to mark his fallacies; Behold him proudly view some pompous pile, Whose high dome swells to emulate the skies, And smile, and say, My name shall live with this Till time shall be no more; while at his feet, Yea, at his very feet, the crumbling dust Of the fallen fabric of the other day Preaches the solemn lesson.--He should know That time must conquer; that the loudest blast That ever fill'd Renown's obstreperous trump Fades in the lapse of ages, and expires. Who lies inhumed in the terrific gloom Of the gigantic pyramid? or who Rear'd its huge walls? Oblivion laughs, and says, The prey is mine.--They sleep, and never more Their names shall strike upon the ear of man, Their memory burst its fetters. Where is Rome? She lives but in the tale of other times; Her proud pavilions are the hermit's home, And her long colonnades, her public walks, Now faintly echo to the pilgrim's feet, Who comes to muse in solitude, and trace, Through the rank moss reveal'd, her honour'd dust. But not to Rome alone has fate confined The doom of ruin; cities numberless, Tyre, Sidon, Carthage, Babylon, and Troy, And rich Phoenicia--they are blotted out, Half razed from memory, and their very name And being in dispute.--Has Athens fallen? Is polish'd Greece become the savage seat Of ignorance and sloth? and shall we dare * * * * * And empire seeks another hemisphere. Where now is Britain?--Where her laurel'd names. Her palaces and halls? Dash'd in the dust. Some second Vandal hath reduced her pride, And with one big recoil hath thrown her back To primitive barbarity.----Again, Through her depopulated vales, the scream Of bloody Superstition hollow rings, And the scared native to the tempest howls The yell of deprecation. O'er her marts, Her crowded ports, broods Silence; and the cry Of the low curlew, and the pensive dash Of distant billows, breaks alone the void; Even as the savage sits upon the stone That marks where stood her capitols, and hears The bittern booming in the weeds, he shrinks From the dismaying solitude.--Her bards Sing in a language that hath perished; And their wild harps suspended o'er their graves, Sigh to the desert winds a dying strain.